All my blogs are intended to be contemplations of ethical issues that concern me. I don't intend them as attacks on individuals. I don't present them as perfect wisdom. They are only my own attempts at clarifying and communicating my own thoughts. I put them on the net, because I feel that it is nice to have something to refer to, if I'm communicating with someone on twitter, etc, where length limitations make it difficult to put out a more extensive comment, and where referring to a background argument may make going on at length unnecessary.
Please understand that I am only beginning to write about my views on our brother and sister animals. I may not know all the arguments others have had, and the positions they've taken, especially where words or phrases have developed specific contexts (like compassion). Have mercy on my ignorance.
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Right/wrong, correct/incorrect, helpful/unhelpful, and what serves
The subject of this blog is about words, and how they work to help conceptualise notions about ethical choices. I feel this is important because words frame and form the way we conceive. Choice of words reflect attitudes and understandings.
"Correct" and "incorrect" are basic terms that should be non-judgemental. Some statements can be checked for accuracy. It is in the interest of anyone wishing to communicate that their statements are accurate. I qualify by saying some statements can be checked for accuracy, because not all statements are about facts, and not all facts are easily checked. Value statements (Blue makes me feel hopeful) cannot be verified except by the speaker, although sometimes (I care deeply about animals) we can try to deduce something about the statement through factual indicators. Some facts (e.g. the level of awareness of coral) are under dispute, because of different definitions of "aware" and different ways of testing that. We need to understand that statements of fact may be correct, incorrect, undetermined, indeterminate, or possibly undeterminable. Subjective statements, like "I feel a connection with animals" depend on what a person means by words like "connection" and even then, their truth is mainly subject to self-examination.
It is helpful to separate moral statements about right and wrong from statements about accuracy, because to say someone is morally wrong is to speak negatively about their nature, their conscience, and their behaviour. With the confusion between wrong and inaccurate, it is probably better to stay away from wrong altogether, and stick with inaccurate or immoral, whichever is meant. Immoral is a more accurate word, and has more emotional force if we want to make that point about someone's action.
Of course, emotional force isn't always the thing that will help change hearts and minds, so aiming words like "immoral" at someone is not always the best idea. This understanding, that communication has a purpose, introduces another term, helpful. The Buddhists have a term, skillful, used about trying to get someone to understand something. While honesty is a foundation precept in Buddhism, there is a recognition that bluntness isn't always the quickest or best way to get someone to see something. "Brutal honesty" can often become more about emotional brutality than about communication or change.
Somewhere in the concept of helpful actions is the notion of motivation. Whether a remark is unhelpful only makes sense when we have some general or specific purpose we are moving towards. That could be as vague as "to help other people become more aware" or as specific as "to try and build an ethical consensus that will lead to the abolition of animal exploitation". Once I have a motivation, I can look at things like how I deal with someone who believes it is OK to kill animals. If my purpose is to change their mind about their actions, I can try to see if it is more helpful to say their actions are immoral, or to try and explain calmly how their attitude comes from a disconnection with other forms of life, and that this disconnection, this callous attitude, will affect them in all their interactions with the world. Calling their actions immoral may be more helpful, but it is a judgement call, and it may change with the person and situation. "Helpful" expresses those considerations about how my actions work toward my goals (or those of others with goals similar to mine).
In a bigger frame, what I try to do forms a more complex set of motivations and purpose. In that context, I look at my actions in terms of whether or not they serve me. This is where instead of deciding how best to talk to someone on the net, I decide whether or not to talk to them at all. Some considerations may be that I feel the person is only posting something to get a rise, or bother people on a list. I may conclude they have no real intention of listening to responses at all, except to try to find some word or phrase they can feed back to continue sniping. In such a situation, there may be no point whatever in responding to them. On the other hand, particularly where it is a public forum, I may choose to comment, with comments being mainly for the benefit of the other people listening/reading. The nature of the comments should reflect my purpose.
In a way, this happened with Katrina Fox's excellent article on "happy meat" in the Sydney Morning Herald. After the article was published, a forum was opened for comments for a time. I (and others) then had to decide what kind of a comment would best serve the interest of promoting the abolition of animal exploitation. Being an open forum, there were a number of people abusing vegans and animal rights advocates, making provocative comments, ignorant comments, or intentionally misleading comments. The question I faced was what I should say, particularly since comments had limited length, and it was sometimes difficult to get the SMH to accept them.
I had to consider what served me: to answer those making ignorant or malicious comments, or to try and add to, or reinforce, the information readers might get. What was clear to me was that, no matter how accurate or justified, there was little point is responding to the "happily adversarial". A lot of what they had to say made no pretence toward real discussion, or even toward logic. They were simply trying to make remarks they considered clever, and to reinforce the lowest, kneejerk reactions to vegans and the subject of animal rights found in the public. Responding to them directly would not serve changing public perception. Becoming angry or upset myself would not serve my purpose, no matter how justified my irritation might be. Others were correcting some of the inaccuracies, and I felt my efforts were best spent adding information about "barn-laid" and other "humane" options. If more people were commenting about that, I might have chosen to counter misinformation.
In any case, sometimes talking with others, it may seem more helpful to talk about what purpose their comments serve: whether what they are saying is helpful, or serves a purpose like "living a good life". This may be more effective than saying their approach is "wrong" or "immoral". Sometimes focussing on common motivations, such as being more aware, more alive, healthier, is more effective than confrontation. Not always, but sometimes.
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